“The officiating trainers have not been fired,” league spokesman Michael Signora told PFT. “They are seasonal employees who have decided not to work at this time. We asked for their NFL-issued laptops back so that those who are working right now can use them.”

With the regular officials locked out, the league’s training a mixed bag of retired officials and those working at lower levels of college football. And now that they don’t have seasoned officials teaching them how to do their jobs, it’s anybody’s guess how they’re learning, or whether they’ll be anything near ready if there’s no settlement between the league and the NFL Referees Association.

Is all of this really worth whatever money the NFL might save in this negotiation?
Best case scenario is that you have the usual NFL referees by week 1 but because of this lockout they won’t have the usual offseason training. Worst case scenario you have division 2 college refs, arena league refs and 80 year old former NFL guys out there calling games which would be a total disaster.
It’s not like they are going to break the refs union. This is a part time job for these guys and the NFL purposely selections guys that have very good careers outside of the NFL in order to minimize the risk that they would be paid off to fix games. These guys make their living outside of the NFL so they have all of the leverage considering the NFL does not have a viable source of replacements.